A short post to announce a small piece of software I released today on github for the ham radio people.
I give you SvxlinkWrapper, this wrapper sits on top of Svxlink‘s stdout and stdin and processes it with python. Making it easy to add more advance features to Svxlinik. Since Svxlink is written in C++ and takes a while to compile, this wrapper really speeds up development. Furthermore, it uses straight.plugin making its simple to write more modules by extending SvxlinkwrapperModule and placing it in the modules folder.

Currently the to modules that SvxlinkWrapper has are for auto-connect to Echolink nodes on startup and another for a QSO logger for Echolink connections. There is also a module that should let you send commands over the Echolink chat, if you extend it. This lets me open and close repeater connections directly from the Echolink chat box.

I have been working on getting an Echolink node running on the Jerusalem repeater using Linux. Echolink is a closed proprietary software that lets you connect ham radios to one another and key them across the Internet. Luckily someone wrote a FOSS program called Svxlink, which lets you connect to the Echolink network on Linux., A remote radio control with an echolink server, svxlink-server and an Echolink graphical client, Qtel. I am going to explain in this post how to get svxlink compiled and working (compiling is the hard part). I will also giving out here an Ubuntu package for the lazy ones among you.

I will also add a small section on the physical connection to the radio, an old Icom IC-02AT from the 80s (around my age). (more…)